My point is that on many occasions your opinion might be either left or right on any 'sociopolitical' situation. And by already being 'left' or 'right-wing' beforehand, your opinion is ingrained without thoroughly examining whatever sorrounds you. I geniuenly don't give a shit most of the time, tho.

My point is that on many occasions your opinion might be either left or right on any 'sociopolitical' situation. And by already being 'left' or 'right-wing' beforehand, your opinion is ingrained without thoroughly examining whatever sorrounds you.

Not really. Some people may be like that... but there are people, including some on this forum, who are not.

The FBI now keeps a list of over 900,000 names belonging to known or suspected terrorists, the American Civil Liberties Union said today.

If that number is accurate, it would be an all-time high, exponentially more than the 100,000 names on the list several years ago. But the number needs to be taken with a grain of salt: after all, the ACLU doesn't keep the list, the FBI does, and the bureau doesn't generally like to talk about it. (Indeed, the FBI has not yet responded to a request for comment for this post.)

But if the ACLU's figure isn't accurate, it's also unlikely to be off by that much. Last September, the ACLU notes, the Department of Justice's Inspector General reported the FBI watch list was at 700,000 names, and growing at 20,000 names per month.

The ACLU says they "extrapolated" from those figures to determine the list's current size. ACLU's Barry Steinhardt added that the group had spoken privately with people familiar with the watch list, who told them the 900,000 figure was not outlandish.

In the past, The FBI has told ABC News that the size of its watch list is classified. Despite that, both the bureau and the DoJ Inspector General have published the total figure in unclassified reports.

There's no doubt the FBI's list is growing: just last June, ABC News reported it was at 509,000 names, based on information in an unclassified FBI budget document.

But strangely, the list may be growing not because of swelling legions of foreign terrorists. Instead, it appears the FBI may be adding tens of thousands of names belonging to U.S. persons it suspects of being domestic terrorists -- people who have no known ties to international terrorist organizations.

A separate entity, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), keeps a list of all names believed to belong to terrorists linked to international terror groups. That list, which was at 100,000 names in 2003, grew to 465,000 names by last June – but since then has grown only modestly, according to NCTC spokesman Carl Kropf. Today, Kropf said that list stands at roughly 500,000 names. (Unlike the FBI, the NCTC does not maintain that the size of its watch list is classified information.)

The FBI takes that list and adds to it a new collection of names which belong to U.S. persons believed to be domestic terrorists: people who have links to terrorism but not to any international group.

Last June, the NCTC was responsible for putting 465,000 names on the watch list, and the FBI appeared to add an additional 44,000. By September, extrapolating from the DoJ Inspector General's report, the FBI's contribution appears to have grown to somewhere north of 200,000 names.

Today – if the ACLU is to be believed – the FBI's contribution may be as high as 417,000 names. Which would raise a new question: Where are so many domestic terrorists coming from? Or do they simply use more aliases than foreign terrorists?

Update: The FBI responded late Wednesday afternoon. Spokesman Chad Kolton did not dispute the ACLU's figure, but noted that the watch list contains names, aliases and name variations for individuals. The number of people on the watch list, he said, was around 300,000, and only 5 percent are U.S. persons. Kolton noted that the list is "regularly reviewed for accuracy." Last year the bureau removed 100,000 records "related to people cleared of any nexus with terrorism," Kolton said.

CELL PHONE (FBI can listen even when phone is turned off)This is a Fox news report from 12/05/06 telling how the FBI can turn on the mic on your cell phone and eaves drop even with the phone is turned off
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=O61YfvPZGJs

Note: strangely enough the video is not working here. Could it be a conspiracy? They don't want you to know it...

_________________The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Power sockets can be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer.

Security researchers found that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed.

By analysing the information leaking onto power circuits, the researchers could see what a target was typing.

The attack has been demonstrated to work at a distance of up to 15m, but refinement may mean it could work over much longer distances.

Hotel attack

"Our goal is to show that information leaks in the most unexpected ways and can be retrieved," wrote Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, of security firm Inverse Path, in a paper describing their work.

The research focused on the cables used to connect PS/2 keyboards to desktop PCs.

Usefully, said the pair, the six wires inside a PS/2 cable are typically "close to each other and poorly shielded". This means that information travelling along the data wire, when a key is pressed, leaks onto the earth (ground in the US) wire in the same cable.

The earth wire, via the PC's power unit, ultimately connects to the plug in the power socket, and from there information leaks out onto the circuit supplying electricity to a room.

Even better, said the researchers, data travels along PS/2 cables one bit at a time and uses a clock speed far lower than any other PC component. Both these qualities make it easy to pick out voltage changes caused by key presses.

A digital oscilloscope was used to gather data about voltage changes on a power line and filters were used to remove those caused by anything other than the keyboard.

"The PS/2 signal square wave is preserved with good quality... and can be decoded back to the original keystroke information," wrote the pair in a paper describing their work.

They demonstrated it working over distances of 1, 5, 10 and 15m from a target, far enough to suggest it could work in a hotel or office.

"The test performed in the laboratory represent a worst case scenario for this type of measurement, which along with acceptable results emphasizes the feasibility of the attack on normal conditions," they added.

The pair said their research was "work in progress" and expect the equipment to get more sensitive as it is refined.

The attack is due to be demonstrated at the Black Hat conference that takes place in Las Vegas from 25-30 July.

Yahoo Sells All Its Users Private Email Contents to U.S. Agencies for Small Price

Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides to "law enforcement" and spy agencies has leaked onto the web.

After earlier reports this week that Yahoo had blocked an FOIA Freedom of Information release of its "law enforcement and intelligence price list", someone helpfully provided a copy of the Yahoo company’s spying guide to the whistleblower web site Cryptome.org.

The 17-page guide, which Yahoo has tried to suppress via legal letters to the Cryptome.org site run by freedom of information champion John Young, describes Yahoo’s policies on keeping the data of Yahoo Email and Yahoo Groups users, as well as the surveillance and spying capabilities it can give to the U.S. government and its agencies.

The Yahoo document is a price list for these spying services and has already resulted in many people closing down their accounts in protest. However, closing a Yahoo account is not as easy as one might expect: users have reported great difficulty in finding the link to delete their account, and, Yahoo will still keep data for another 90 days.

If you ask Yahoo! to delete your Yahoo! account, in most cases your account will be deactivated and then deleted from our user registration database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity.

Please note that any information that we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your deletion request. This may be the case even though no information about your account remains in our active user databases.

Many government leaders and officials around Africa, Asia and Latin America are known by Mathaba to widely be using Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail in spite of these Email services being hosted on U.S. computers and the ease that gives the hosts to access their data.. Mathaba has also long been aware of a great many business people, politicians and even Presidents who use the "free" web-based email services of Yahoo for their Email communications, thus making it easy for the U.S. and its owners to spy on them with negligible cost.

Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and Internet service providers.

But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have been stupid enough to try to issue a "DMCA takedown notice" to Cryptome demanding the document be removed. Yahoo claims that publication of the document is a copyright violation, and gave Cryptome owner John Young a Thursday deadline for removing the document.

We estimate Yahoo stand a near-zero chance of success given that Young has thousands of intelligence and other leaked documents on his site and in the past decade has yet to remove a single document upon legal threats, the same 10-year track record held by Mathaba on documents on British Intelligence in spite of having computers seized and properties raided.

Mathaba is now also hosting the Yahoo leaked document on its servers around the world, and the cat is long out of the bag with the original document having been downloaded and distributed by many already.

When John Young was asked if there was anything he wouldn't reveal on his site -- a fault in the President's Secret Service detail, for instance -- he said, "Well, I'm actually looking for that information right now", much to the chagrin of those who believe that the U.S. government and its hopelessly corrupt agencies should have a right to supress information from the public.

The Compliance Guide reveals, as has been known to Mathaba prior to the leak via our own sources, that Yahoo does not retain a copy of e-mails that an account holder sends unless that customer sets up the account to store those e-mails. Yahoo also cannot search for or produce deleted e-mails once they’ve been removed from a user’s trash folder.

The guide also reveals that the company retains the IP addresses from which a user logs in for just one year. But the company’s logs of IP addresses used to register new accounts for the first time go back to 1999. The contents of accounts on Flickr, the photo sharing and storage site which Yahoo also owns, are purged as soon as a user deactivates the account.

Chats conducted through the company’s Web Messenger service may be saved on Yahoo’s server if one of the parties in the correspondence set up their account to archive chats. This pertains to the web-based version of the chat service, however. Yahoo does not save the content of chats for consumers who use the downloadable Web Messenger client on their computer.

Instant message logs are retained 45 to 60 days and includes an account holder’s friends list, and the date and times the user communicated with them.

Young responded to Yahoo’s takedown request with a defiant note:

I cannot find at the Copyright Office a grant of copyright for the Yahoo spying document hosted on Cryptome. To assure readers Yahoo’s copyright claim is valid and not another hoary bluff without substantiation so common under DMCA bombast please send a copy of the copyright grant for publication on Cryptome.

Until Yahoo provides proof of copyright, the document will remain available to the public for it provides information that is in the public interest about Yahoo’s contradictory privacy policy and should remain a topic of public debate on ISP unacknowledged spying complicity with officials for lucrative fees.

Note: Yahoo’s exclamation point is surely trademarked so omitted here.

The company responded that a copyright notice is optional for works created after March 1, 1989 and repeated its demand for removal on Thursday. For now, the document remains on the Cryptome site.

Threat Level reported Tuesday that muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian had asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, to provide him with a copy of the pricing list supplied by telecoms and internet service providers for the surveillance services they offer government agencies. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that the information was proprietary and that the companies would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

Yahoo wrote in its objection letter that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

“Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,” the company added.

The price list that Yahoo tried to prevent the government from releasing to Soghoian appears in one small paragraph in the 17-page leaked document. According to this list, Yahoo charges the government about $30 to $40 for the contents, including e-mail, of a subscriber’s account. It charges $40 to $80 for the contents of a Yahoo group.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other U.S. "social networking" sites are at minimum providing information in similar fashion to U.S. agencies, and in some cases have also received substantial funding by U.S. government related entities as a most efficient and cost-effective means of spying on their users around the world.

Google is teaming up with the US National Security Agency to battle cyber-attacks from China in a move that is causing disquiet on the internet.

The alliance of the world’s largest internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance agency has provoked concern among privacy advocates. The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Centre filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more details yesterday hours after the deal was disclosed by The Washington Post.

The alliance puts Google in bed with the US Government because it challenges suspected Chinese Government interference on the internet.

It comes as Congress prepares to hold a hearing on Wednesday at which a senior Google executive will testify on the internet giant’s role in promoting democracy.

Nicole Wong, Google’s vice-president and deputy general counsel, will appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing on The Google Predicament: Transforming US Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security and Trade.

The agreement, which was still being finalised last night, would reportedly allow the NSA access to data from Google to help defend against cyber-attacks. But Google would not grant the agency access to users’ searches or e-mail accounts.

The Wall Street Journal said that Google began working with the NSA on the same day that it announced that hackers in China had made a cyber-attack on the company, targeting the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.

Google, which censors internet searches in China, has threatened to pull out of the Chinese market unless Beijing can guarantee uncensored searches.

The Pentagon said this week that it was putting cyberspace on the same level as land, sea and air as a potential battleground. A new US Cyber Command is being set up under Strategic Command to defend military computer networks and “conduct cyberspace military operations”.

Jack Goldsmith, co-author of a 2009 report entitled Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding US Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities, wrote in the Washington Post this week that the NSA had offensive capabilities.

“The NSA, the world’s most powerful signals intelligence organisation, is also in the business of breaking into and extracting data from offshore enemy computer systems and of engaging in computer attacks that, in the NSA’s words, ‘disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy the information’ found in these systems,” he wrote.

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil.

In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security. And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from "border control" functions. This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well.

Now that the precedent has been set to employ drones over non-combat areas, the military is further revealing the technology of miniaturization that they currently have at their disposal. As drone expert, P.W. Singer said, "At this point, it doesn't really matter if you are against the technology, because it's coming." According to Singer, "The miniaturization of drones is where it really gets interesting. You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they're being watched."

So what exactly is on the horizon?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds military tech development through the private sector with defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Honeywell. It was Honeywell that introduced the T-Hawk micro drone -- now purchased by Miami-Dade county for use in the metro area -- which weighs all of 16 pounds and can fly in any direction. However, this is not so "micro" compared to the latest spy drone to be revealed: the Nano Hummingbird, produced by AeroVironment. The video below illustrates the capabilities of this 19g vehicle:

This mimicking of nature heralds a range of science fiction nightmare scenarios, but the name of this vehicle, "nano", is what should spark a red alert. Because, in fact, DARPA and their contractors are working on true nano surveillance that will have biological components . . . and applications.

Here are some surveillance and detection concepts already in operation, or under development (keeping in mind that what is revealed in the public domain is often quite far behind the reality):

* A group of smaller surveillance drones called NAV (nano air vehicles) or MAV (micro air vehicles) already have been commissioned: mapleseed drones; sparrow drones by 2015, dragonfly drones to fly in swarms by 2030, and eventually a housefly drone. And if the reconstruction of nature doesn't pan out, nature itself can be hijacked using electrical impulses to create cyborg surveillance insects being studied at major universities. * Nano sensors for use in agriculture that measure crops and environmental conditions. * Bomb-sniffing plants using rewired DNA to detect explosives and biological agents. * "Smart Dust" motes that wirelessly transmit data on temperature, light, and movement (this can also be used in currency to track cash). * Nano-based RFID barcodes that can be embedded into any material for tracking of all products . . . and people. * Devices to detect molecules, enzymes, proteins and genetic markers -- opening up the door for race-specific bioweapons, as mentioned in the Project For a New American Century's policy paper Rebuilding America's Defenses.

Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released a revamped version of its electronic reading room for records and documents from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Dubbed “The Vault,” the database is designed to make it easier for readers to scour thousands of FBI documents.

Among the documents are some real national treasures. The files are divided into categories that range from Counterterrorism, to the Gang Era, to Organized Crime and Unexplained Phenomenon. The last of which contains the infamous “Guy Hottel letter.”

Hottel was a special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office. On March 22, 1950, he sent a memo to the FBI director concerning UFO sightings in New Mexico.

“An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico,” read the letter. “They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture.”

In the pop culture section, readers can peruse FBI files on the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Malcolm X and Lucille Ball. Even famed country singer John Denver has a 33-page file that documents an FBI investigation into his possible association with drug trafficking.

One document, dated Feb. 15, 1990, even noted that at a benefit concert, “it was alleged that Denver was pretty well strung-out on cocaine.”

New to the Pop Culture section are documents pertaining to an FBI civil rights/color of law investigation that ran from 1997 to 2005 about the death of rapper Christopher George “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, who was murdered on March 9, 1997.

The Vault has on display FBI documents about Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Taylor Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Apparently, Lady Bird received quite her fair share of death threats during and after her husband was the ruler of the free world.

People actually thought that the invention of the internet and cell phones etc was for reasons other than surveillance? It's not going to stop. Just remember you are being recorded at all times and you'll be fine.

The FBI has had my #number since I was active in the SDS from late '69 thru early '72. If you joined any group that wasn't ROTC during the Viet Nam war, your on the FBI's list of #numbers and if you were "active" in any group that was anti-war, they most likely have a little folder on you too. This is general knowledge and you can thank little Nancy boy Edgar J* Hoover for them too.

Now you’re cooking with gas...when my Father admitted in 1979 to first hand knowledge concerning the Roswell Event after seeing it on TV and feeling "it was ok to talk about it since it was on TV" (he was sworn to secrecy).

He always said they had three that crashed in the desert. They always thought our radar had something to do with it, he was a top radar man during WWII.

I am not sure when he came in contact with them, but he was both in the southwest after the war and worked at Wright Patterson until the 1950's.

Students for a Democratic Society, a lefty organization of the late Sixties-early Seventies. I had some fun romps with them in my day, although I never formally joined. VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) was more my thing.

What would be a fun romp? As for Vietnam vets against the war I was in the war but against it on one huge level, and that would be the draft. Most drafted were against it , we never lost a battle, was at fire base lady bird for a couple days and those guys hated LBJ. What was kinda big in the early 70,s was the MDM, movement for democratic military, organised by J Fonda. She was full of crap. sds was plain and simple pure crap, and one of their leaders, praised Obama in 08, and now calls for his impeachment. Roger A and his like are scum suckers, get ready 40 and unders cause the draft will come back, with the like of our do as i say not as i do administration.

_________________A government Bureau is the closest thing to eternal life on earth that you will ever see

Students for a Democratic Society, a lefty organization of the late Sixties-early Seventies. I had some fun romps with them in my day, although I never formally joined. VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) was more my thing.

There were some violent offshoot "wannabe like The Weathermen" groups to come outta the SDS. As a minor I was heavily recruited for some nefarious activities like the Hayward/Alameda county records office bombing and fire that killed a janitor that wasn't supposed to be there. It's that kind of violence that made me quit those assholes! I was just tryin' to get my friends and our boys home. I had a brother in law and several friends that were serving at the time and I didn't want anymore violence or them killed over in 'Nam. When I found out that some of the SDS people had prior knowledge of what was going to transpire in Hayward, I never went back. I did work with the VVAW doing mailings and helping organize some of the marches at Berkeley & Oakland after that too. They at least knew what it was all about and weren't some knee jerk reactionaries tryin' to overthrow the government. I just wanted the boys home and to stop this kind of western invasion of countries we got no business occupying in the first place. In other words, wars that say to the world : You can only be free the American way. We have the armed services to prove were right too.

I was bummed when LBJ refused to run. He really united everyone against the war. Then Nixon did just the opposite of what his platform was. Bring the troops home with honor. That honor costs 35,000 more US soldiers lives and 5-6 more years of war and over a hundred thousand civilians killed or maimed.If they try to bring back the draft, I'll die in the streets tryin' to stop it! Even though I was 4F ( broken back) and therefor would never have went to 'Nam, I refused to register for the draft. I don't think any government has the right to say who fights their wars and who doesn't. The volunteer army is turning kids away, so there's really no reason to bring the draft back anytime soon anyway.Tread on me (the US) and it's another story!

On a side note, didn't Tomas Hayden start the SDS? I think he was going to Michigan St. at that time, another bastion of radicalism during the '60's.

In any war, California's always the state with the most to bring home for burial.

EDIT: Thanks for your service BS and PJ and if you were in 'Nam welcome home too! I know you didn't get that "back in the day" and that was one of the things that pissed me off about the SDS. They acted like every solder was a baby killer. Which they weren't of course. Anyway, thanx man!

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